Every evening, the first comer at the waiter's inquiry, "What will you take, sir?" never failed to reply, "Nothing just at present, I am waiting for a friend." The friend arrived, to be assailed by the brutal question, "Have you any money?" He would make a despairing gesture in the negative, and then add, loud enough to be heard by the _dame du comptoir_, "By Jove, no; only fancy, I left my purse on my console-table, with gilt feet, in the purest Louis XV style. Ah! what a thing it is to be forgetful." He would sit down, and the waiter would wipe the table as if he had something to do. A third would come, who was sometimes able to reply, "Yes. I have ten sous." "Good!" we would reply; "order a cup of coffee, a glass and a water bottle; pay and give two sous to the waiter to secure his silence." This would be done. Others would come and take their places beside us, repeating to the waiter the same chorus, "We are with this gentleman." Frequently we would be eight or nine sitting at the same table, and only one customer. Whilst smoking and reading the papers we would, however, pass the glass and bottle. When the water began to run short, as on a ship in distress, one of us would have the impudence to call out, "Waiter, some water!" The master of the establishment, who understood our situation, had no doubt given orders for us to be left alone, and made his fortune without our help. He was a good fellow and an intelligent one, having subscribed to all the scientific journals of Europe, which brought him the custom of foreign students. Another cafe perpetuating the best traditions of the Latin Quarter was the Vachette, which survived until the death of Jean Moreas in 1911. The Vachette is usually cited by antiquarians as a model of circumspection as compared with the scores of cafes in the Quarter that were given up to debaucheries. One writer puts it: "The Vachette traditions leaned more to scholarship than sensuality." In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries the Parisian cafe was truly a coffee house; but as many of the patrons began to while away most of their waking hours in them, the proprietors added other beverages and food to hold their patronage. Consequently, we find listed among the cafes of Paris some houses that are more accurately described as restaurants, although they may have started their careers as coffee houses. _Historic Parisian Cafes_